


somewhere patient, somehow kind

by beanierose



Series: somewhere patient, somehow kind [2]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: College AU, F/F, but it is mostly me being a dumb soft useless gay, it is the first year of their relationship, katya is a trans woman, them learning how to exist together, trixie is a cis woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-01-31 07:49:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18586921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose
Summary: The first year of Trixie and Katya's relationship. A sequel to "in each place and forever" but it can stand alone tbh.





	1. осень

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My endless, eternal gratitude to Nadia for looking this over a hundred times and talking me off a ledge every single day, I love you babe.

perhaps i am somewhere patient,  
somehow  
kind  
**bob hicok, _other lives and dimensions and finally a love poem_**

* * *

Trixie comes awake in the bleary half darkness of four in the morning to see Katya leaning over her. It takes the breath right out of her chest and she reaches up to touch. Katya’s skin is cool beneath her fingertips as she traces the edge of her cheekbone and the fullness of her bottom lip.

“Good morning, baby,” Katya whispers.

She brushes the baby hairs back away from Trixie’s forehead and comes in close to kiss the corner of her mouth. There’s so much tenderness in it that Trixie could cry. She turns her head a fraction to kiss Katya properly, not caring about either of their morning breath.

“Do you always wake up this early?”

“Not this early,” Katya laughs. “But early, yeah. I have to go back to my apartment. I have to work today.”

Something small and foolish and childlike inside of Trixie’s chest propels her to wrap her arm around Katya’s shoulders and pull her down on top of her. All night, she kept coming awake for just a moment at a time to feel the closeness of Katya in bed beside her. She is not ready yet to be alone beneath the sheets.

“What if instead, you stay here?”

Katya slides her knee over Trixie’s hips. The sheets are between them, but the warm weight of Katya on top of her makes Trixie arch off the mattress. They kiss lazily for a little while longer. Katya is dressed in yesterday’s clothes, her hair in a crazy white-blonde halo around her head. Trixie still can’t believe that she’s actually here. When she walked into class yesterday and saw Katya sitting there her heart had immediately started beating out of her chest.

She wonders if it will be like this forever. If every time she sees Katya her arms will break out in gooseflesh and her stomach will roll over. She hopes so.

“I wish I could stay here, baby.” Katya is petting her hair now, propping herself up on an elbow so she can look down at Trixie. “I really do. But I have to go.”

“Come back tonight?” Trixie asks.

It takes all of the courage she possesses. She doesn’t really know what this is, what they’re doing. The sex has been out of this world; she can’t stop thinking about Katya’s dick and her hands and her mouth. But. . .she enjoyed sitting next to Katya and quietly working on their own stuff just as much as she enjoyed sitting on her face.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I want to see you again. I want to. . .keep seeing you.”

The smile that Katya gives her is so wide and joyful that it makes her nose crinkle up and her eyes close. Trixie loves it, how her whole face gets involved. Katya kisses her again one last time and then gets up off the bed and shoves her hands into her pockets.

“I gotta go. Right now. Or I’m gonna have to fuck you into the mattress. But I will text you when I finish work.”

Just like that, they are inseparable.

Katya comes back that evening with a bag, and stays for four days until she has to go home and change clothes. When she goes back to San Francisco, to her apartment, Trixie goes with her. They’ve both kind of dropped off the face of the earth, so completely absorbed in spending every moment with one another that their friendships are suffering.

Well. Katya’s are. Trixie isn’t sure that she has friends to speak of just yet.

“We have a double date tonight, зайка,” Katya tells her over breakfast.

She made french toast for the two of them and Trixie cut strawberries, shucking the leaves one at a time with a knife. Concentration had creased the space between her eyebrows, until Katya pressed her lips there. As they eat, Trixie leaves one hand on the table for Katya to play with her fingers.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Brooke and Vanjie found out where I’ve been. They’re demanding to meet you.”

A little flutter of nervousness comes to life in Trixie’s belly but she ignores it and smiles at Katya. Meeting her friends feels like a big step, even if she did meet Fame right away. This feels much more intentional. She’s nervous.

Late at night, when they’re naked and their breathing is still settling, Katya tells her about her friends and her life. What it was like before Trixie fell into it. After everything that Katya has apparently told them all about her, Trixie is anxious to live up to their idea of who she is.

She’s finished with classes early, so she takes her time getting ready for their evening. The one thing that she wanted in her apartment was a bathtub and she’s so glad she made that choice. Trixie uses the bath bomb that Katya got for her the other day. She exfoliates and shaves, deep conditions her hair and does a face mask. The way that Katya touches her as if she’s something precious makes her want to become that. She picks out her outfit carefully, going with a pink pleated mini skirt and a white turtleneck.

When Katya swings by to pick her up, she’s got a bouquet with her. It’s baby’s breath and lavender and when she holds it out to Trixie in both hands her ears turn pink.

“I know we’re not gonna be alone, but this is our first official date. So. Flowers.”

“Oh, they’re gorgeous,” Trixie breathes. She takes them, and settles her free hand between Katya’s shoulder blades to bring her in close. She kisses her, soft and so grateful. “Thank you. I love them.”

She busies herself putting the flowers into a vase. They have a little bit of time, so Katya pins her against the kitchen counter and pushes her skirt up around her waist and fucks her, their thighs slapping together.

After, Katya laughs and pulls her underwear back up for her. She tugs her own dress back down over her hips. It’s a form-fitting tiny black strappy thing with a sheer long sleeve overlay. Trixie can see the enticing flash of Katya’s tattoos and she works her tongue around her teeth.

“I can’t wait to show you off, счастье моё.”

“I’ll try not to embarrass you.”

Katya screams out a laugh at that. She pulls Trixie in with both hands at her jaw to kiss her, fierce and possessive. It makes Trixie’s toes curl in her white Mary Janes.

“You are the most gorgeous fucking creature in all of human history,” Katya tells her. She’s got her hands up beneath Trixie’s skirt and palming her ass.

Before Katya, Trixie never thought she’d be with someone so possessive. Never imagined how much she would like it, having Katya’s hands all over her all the time.

They walk the few blocks to the restaurant. Their hands swing in a loose grip between them. It’s been a week, only a week, but Trixie feels as if she’s known Katya her whole life. Every time she sees her or speaks to her on the phone or gets a text, her heart cries out in jubilation.

“Listen,” Katya says, and stops them in the street before they can go inside. “Any teasing that might happen? It’s about me. They’ve never seen me care this much about someone before. You’ve ruined me, Trixie Mattel.”

She laughs, but Katya doesn’t. She gets like this sometimes, so suddenly intense that it startles Trixie. After a moment she nods, as if she’s decided something, and opens the restaurant door to let Trixie walk inside.

Katya gets waylaid by a server and has to explain that they’re meeting friends here. It means there is no one next to Trixie to hold her up when a tiny, pink-haired screaming banshee barrels into her and wraps both arms around her tight.

“Oh my God, girl, I can’t believe you a real person!” Vanjie yells. Trixie has been shown a few pictures, and has heard a lot about Katya’s friends. It’s not enough to prepare her.

Vanjie has grabbed her hand and is leading her over to the table, where Brooke is getting up from her seat. She’s tall, taller than Trixie even. Her blonde hair is down to her waist and the ivory silk blouse she’s wearing lets her clavicle peek out.

The two of them make an unusual pair. Vanjie’s dress is very tiny and very tight; her hair is the same pastel pink that forms the basis of Trixie’s entire aesthetic. Brooke is calmer and more graceful, still and quiet in the eye of the maelstrom that Vanjie swirls around her.

“Hey, mama,” Brooke says. She holds Trixie at arms length for a second to take her in, and then she hugs her as well. “It’s so good to finally meet you.”

Katya has come up behind her now; she felt the energy of the room shifting as Katya moved through it. A warm hand slides into hers for just a second and squeezes, and Trixie relaxes instantly. These two are less intimidating than Fame, she’s grateful for that, but she’s still off-kilter.

It’s not about her, not really. Trixie knows that she’s pretty, and she works very hard on being a kind and gentle person too. She just wants them to think that she’s good with Katya. For Katya. She wants their approval, silly as that might be.

Vanjie and Katya are talking, both at the same time and over top of one another but somehow still hearing what the other is saying. They’ve settled themselves at one side of the table, so Trixie takes the vacant seat next to Brooke and across from Katya.

She feels herself gravitating towards the calm that Brooke radiates. She’s twisted towards Trixie in her chair and they chat a little together while their girlfriends catch up.

Well. Shit.

They haven’t had that talk yet, she and Katya. The thought of bringing it up with her is utterly terrifying. Relationships aren’t Katya’s strong suit, she knows that, and she doesn’t want them to put a label on this and immediately ruin it.

“You know, you are just exactly as she described you,” Brooke says. She’s pouring water into everybody’s glasses now. Already Trixie is learning that Brooke is the mom friend of the group, and she ducks her head to hide her smile a little bit.

“How did she describe me?” Trixie has heard a little from Katya about what she’s told her friends, but she’d like to hear it from Brooke. Her ego, sure, but she also really wants to know what Katya’s opinion of her is.

“She said you’re her opposite. Tall and curvy and pink. She said you’re sweet, and smart. She said she can’t stop thinking about you, and that never happens to her. I’ve never seen her maintain interest in someone after she’s gotten them into bed, before.”

Brooke is sifting her fingers absentmindedly through the lengths of her hair as she speaks, as if she’s oblivious to how Trixie holds one hand over her heart. How she presses her lips together to hold back the well of emotion that threatens to pour out.

It helps, to hear it. Katya is in this as deep as she is, is as caught by surprise as Trixie by the depth of her own feeling.

Vanjie almost knocks her glass over, but Brooke is catching it before it’s even really happening. She captures Vanjie’s hand and kisses her knuckle, so much tenderness in the soft smile she gives her. Is this what they’re like, Trixie and Katya? Is the softness of her foolish heart whenever she looks at Katya all over her face like this.

“Careful, Mamí,” Brooke says fondly. She turns her attention back to Trixie then, but her hand is still in Vanjie’s on the tabletop.

Something Vanjie says makes Katya scream laugh and stamp her feet in her chair. Trixie laughs too, not at all in on the joke but so thrilled to see Katya happy all the same. Being with her, looking at her - it feels like her heart is walking around on the outside of her body. Ill-advised, most definitely, but it is way too late now.

Dinner is really great. Vanjie and Katya together keep everybody in stitches. The three of them adopt Trixie into the fold so easily, and Brooke in particular is careful to explain the context of their inside jokes. She actively ensures that Trixie isn’t left out, and the kindness of that one small act makes Trixie feel a part of the group already. After they’ve finished their entrées, Brooke and Katya switch seats.

“Are you having a good time, зайка?” Katya says right against her ear.

It’s so fucking stupid to have missed her when she has been literally across the table from her all night, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Trixie drapes her arm along the back of Katya’s chair and sifts her fingers through the fine baby hairs at the nape of her neck.

“I’m having a great time. I really like your friends.”

Katya turns her head to kiss the inside of Trixie’s wrist. She lingers for a moment, and the hot wash of her breath over Trixie’s pulse makes her press her thighs together and breathe slowly through her nose.

Across from them, Vanjie is fixing her lipstick. Brooke is holding the mirror for her in one hand and the lipstick tube in the other. Once she’s done Vanjie kisses Brooke’s cheek and leaves a perfect, deep red lip print there. It makes Brooke huff an annoyed breath, but she makes no move to wipe it away.

“Your friends too, baby,” Katya says.

She smoothes a couple of stray hairs back from Trixie’s face where they’ve gotten stuck to her cheek. Trixie turns her head to kiss Katya’s palm, and delights in the way Katya folds her fingers closed over it as if to keep Trixie’s kiss safe.

“Stop talking about us, Mary,” Vanjie says and points one long stiletto nail at them. Trixie is still getting used to the voice that comes out of the tiny, gorgeous human in front of her, but it’s fun. The both of them are fun. Trixie admires the easy way they love each other, not caring one bit who might be looking.

They order dessert, and while they wait for it to come Trixie gets to hear more stories about what Katya was like their first two years of school from Brooke and Vanjie. Katya’s foundation tonight is so thick that the flame of embarrassment doesn’t show through, but her ears betray her. The tips of them are livid and it is so endearing that Trixie has to kiss her.

Being across the table from her all night has made Trixie more desperate for her than she’s realised. Their mouths meet and Katya’s lips are already parting, her tongue darting out. Trixie opens for her and slides a hand into her hair to cradle the curve of her skull. She doesn’t mean to make out with Katya in this restaurant right now, but she wants her so bad that her whole body aches with it.

“Yesss, get those cookies!” Vanjie cheers.

It makes Trixie laugh and she has to break apart from Katya. She feels the bloom of shyness high up in her cheeks and along the column of her neck. Katya shrieks a laugh and starts to work trying to fix the smudges of red lipstick all over Trixie.

Brooke leans across the table conspiratorially and stage whispers at her. “It’s a lost cause. Best just to embrace always looking like a clown.”

After dinner, they say goodbye to Brooke and Vanjie. Trixie has plans to meet Vanessa on campus tomorrow, since they both have a free period, and study together. As they walk, Katya repeatedly squeezes Trixie’s hand in hers. She keeps giving her this pleased, proud smile and it’s making Trixie walk faster. She wants to get home and pull Katya down on top of her now.

It’s Katya that unlocks Trixie’s front door, Katya that switches on the lamp and the string lights because she knows Trixie hates the harshness of the canned lighting. While Trixie starts the kettle boiling, Katya goes around and lights a couple candles, draws the blinds closed. She’s so comfortable in Trixie’s space. It makes her so, so happy.

“Come here, зайка.”

Trixie goes. She expects Katya to start stripping her, or to not bother and just bend her over the back of the couch again. Instead, she wraps both arms around her. Katya has a habit of always putting her arms around the shoulders of whoever she’s hugging, no matter how much taller than her they are. Trixie’s arms slide easily around Katya’s waist and she holds her so tight.

“You make me so happy, baby,” Katya tells her. Trixie can feel her half hard against her hip, but Katya makes no move to do anything about it just yet. “So happy. I’m so glad I found you again.”

“I think I found you, actually,” Trixie laughs.

She’s still not over it. Will never really be over it. How Katya had looked, sitting there that morning as if she were waiting for Trixie to sit down beside her. As if she’d been waiting for Trixie all along.

She knows how Katya gets. Maudlin, sometimes. So overwhelmed with joy that it loops right back around into sadness. Trixie strokes her fingers over Katya’s hair and holds her close for as long as she needs.

The slow in-and-out of Katya’s breath in the curve of Trixie’s neck is making her break out in gooseflesh all along her arms and her thighs. She likes Katya so much, and Katya likes her too. Katya is gentle with her, but also silly and goofy and fun. She’s falling hard, but that’s alright. Trixie is certain that Katya is, too.

That night, after Katya has fucked Trixie so slowly that it made her gasp and arch, made her crazy, she sits on the ledge and smokes out of the open window. She’s wearing one of Trixie’s favourite giant t-shirts and nothing else, and her calves flex as she swings her legs.

They washed their faces together side by side in Trixie’s tiny sink earlier. Trixie’s skincare routine is precious to her, a moment out of her day where she can reconnect and listen to her body. Katya does yoga, so she gets it. Still she stands, transfixed, while Trixie applies her various serums and moisturisers. At the weekend, she wants to give Katya a facial. To pamper her, and also because she wants the chance to stare down at Katya while her eyes are closed and map out every pore and line and dry patch.

Katya is so beautiful without makeup. Her lashes are pale and delicate and they make her eyes look huge. Trixie wants Katya next to her, wants to feel her warm and soft skin. As soon as she’s finished her cigarette she’ll be here, and Trixie is content enough in that knowledge to pull the sheets up over her shoulders.

She is drifting in and out of consciousness. It’s late, and she’s tired, but she keeps opening one eye at a time to check that Katya’s still here. She must fall asleep a little bit, because she startles awake at the cool air coming in beneath the gap in the sheets when Katya climbs into bed beside her.

“You should sleep, счастье моё,” Katya says.

Trixie feels the ghost of Katya’s lips at her temple and the corner of her mouth. She has gotten used to sharing her bed with Katya so quickly. In the middle of the night sometimes Katya will stretch out like a cat and her toes will brush the tops of Trixie’s feet.

Most mornings, she wakes up to see Katya doing her yoga practice in the kitchen. Trixie will pad carefully around her and make tea for them both and they’ll drink it together at her little table.

“Trixie, милая?” She says it so quietly, like she thinks Trixie might be asleep already.

She is, almost, but she manages a tiny noise of assent.

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

Trixie opens her eyes, and pets clumsily at Katya’s cheek until she leans down to kiss her. She is so warm and comfortable and Katya smells good. She would like to live inside of this moment for a long while.

“Yes. Yes, Katya. Of course. Yes.”

She finds she has to say it three times, like a spell. It often feels like she’s conjured Katya directly from the depths of her soul, and it makes her superstitious. Trixie falls asleep just like that, holding Katya’s hand in both of hers on her chest, over her heart.

*  *  *

When the weather starts to turn, Katya gets giddy. She’s a witch, Trixie is sure of it. It doesn’t get much colder, not in San Francisco, but the evenings start drawing in and the botanical garden erupts in brilliant reds and oranges. Katya comes home with more candles every day and scatters them all over Trixie’s apartment. She gets very into tarot at the end of September, and Trixie lets her practice readings on her over and over.

She finds herself missing the fall in Wisconsin. Katya misses the weather on the east coast too, and they make tentative plans to go someplace they can see the snow closer to Christmas. It’s not sweater weather, not at all, but in the evenings Katya will turn up the AC so that the two of them can pull on their cosiest clothes and snuggle up on the couch.

They make a fall bucket list one afternoon and stick it to the side of the refrigerator. Trixie is thinking of it more as a suggestion, but Katya is diligent in her insistence that they get through everything. Trixie gets to introduce her to the Scream franchise, which she can’t believe she hasn’t already seen. They watch all of them one Saturday and glut themselves on popcorn and Katya pretends to be scared just so that she can hide her face against Trixie’s shoulder.

By late October, they’re basically living together. Katya still has her apartment in the city, and sometimes she stays there if she’s working early the next morning. If they can make it work, Trixie goes with her. Otherwise, they both live out of Trixie’s tiny studio.

Next year, they’re going to look for a bigger place in San Francisco. Trixie wanted to be close to campus for her freshman year, but there are more job opportunities in the city. To be making plans - to be thinking at all about next year - seems insane, but neither of them is pretending anymore. She can’t imagine a single day of her life without Katya in it.

“Should we do a couple’s costume?”

Katya is upside down in Trixie’s desk chair and spinning around and around, kicking her feet while she waits for her bright red toenail polish to dry. Trixie is cross-legged in the middle of their bed, her guitar in her lap and note paper strewn around her. She has a gig at a bar on campus next week, and she’s trying to pad out her setlist.

“As what?” She’s only half-listening.

Katya gets out of the chair and does a peculiar duck-walk over to Trixie so she doesn’t smudge her nails. She sits on the edge of the bed and takes Trixie’s hands in hers. Every single thing Katya does, she goes at with the full intensity of her creative energy. It’s good that she pushes Trixie to try things, but she’s tired and kind of grouchy today.

“I don’t know yet. We can brainstorm.”

“I’m not sure if I even want to go out on Halloween.”

“ _Trixie_ ,” Katya gasps, and squeezes her fingers. “Our first Halloween! You have to.”

She feels unkind today. A little mean, a little spiteful. It’s not fair of her to take it out on Katya. She takes a slow breath in, another, and she remembers this morning when Katya woke her up with breakfast in bed and then ate her out until Trixie had to beg her to stop.

They haven’t been out much. Sure, they go places all the time, but they don’t go clubbing. Katya is clinging desperately to her sobriety with both hands, and Trixie has never been a big drinker anyway. She would much rather stay home and cook dinner together and go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Katya ducks her head to catch Trixie’s eyeline. “Please, зайка.”

Trixie sighs at that, the pleading and the pet name both. It’s not fair. Katya knows what it does to her. She’d give her the moon, if she asked for it. Just reach right up and take it. It feels entirely possible, when Katya looks at her like this. All sweet and tentative.

“Okay. Alright, fine. If you want.”

She regrets it right away. Katya spends the rest of the day, the rest of the week, researching costume ideas. Trixie is glad not to have to put in the work. She likes Halloween because she likes the crackle of possibility in the air, likes the idea that the veil between worlds is so thin it feels as if she could just step over. Sometimes she thinks that’s how Katya got here. She appreciates seeing other people’s costumes, but since she grew out of it being acceptable to trick or treat she’s less excited.

The party is at Brooke and Vanjie’s place. There are so many bodies packed into the space that Trixie expects the fire department to show up at any moment and shut it down. She invited a couple of the friends she’s made in class, at Vanjie’s insistence, and Kim came. She’s glad to have a friend here, because Katya disappears pretty much immediately.

Trixie is talking and laughing and mingling. She admires Fame’s makeup and gets introduced to the people she doesn’t know as _Katya’s Trixie_ and helps Brooke keep things under control. She manages to have a good time, even though she feels like a fucking idiot who got abandoned by her girlfriend in the first ten minutes of this party.

They’re codependent, but also fiercely sociable outside of one another. Katya has her own circle of friends and sometimes Trixie joins them, sometimes not. She has other freshman friends now, and she and Kim spend a lot of time together when Katya is working or otherwise busy. She doesn’t mind Katya being apart from her, but not tonight.

Not tonight, when she dressed as Tatum to Katya’s Sidney. She’s wearing a fucking lime green turtleneck and a hateful red wig, for Katya. The least she could do is hold her hand.

“Trixie, sweetheart,” Brooke pulls her away from a conversation with a hand at her elbow and pity all over her face. “I think you two should go.”

Katya is slumped half against the wall in the hallway. When she sees Trixie she breaks wide open on a grin and stumbles towards her, throwing both arms around her neck.

“My baby’s here! Hi, baby.”

“I’ve been here this whole time,” Trixie says, and peels Katya off of her.

It’s a production, to get her home. Katya is compliant and docile at her side. She’s a sweet drunk, overly affectionate, and she keeps petting at Trixie in the back of their Uber. Trixie makes Katya drink a full pint glass of water. She fills it up again and leaves it on the nightstand for her, makes sure there’s Advil there too.

Trixie climbs into bed next to her. She left her there, sacked out on her stomach, while she took off her makeup and changed into pajamas. She’s expecting that Katya will be asleep already, but she isn’t.

“Are you mad at me, счастье моё?”

“I’m not mad.” It’s a lie, and they both know it, but she really doesn’t feel like doing this now.

Katya gets this cute little wrinkle between her eyebrows and she pouts at Trixie. “You are. Why?”

“Because I’m in love with you, you stupid bitch.”

It is so unfair of her to weaponise it, and Trixie regrets it immediately. Hates herself for it. She says it every single day of course, they both do, but never with words. It’s just so frustrating. Humiliating, to have to be summoned to collect her messy, drunk girlfriend. The second the words are out, Trixie deflates. She brushes Katya’s sweaty bangs back out of her face.

“I’m sorry. You’re not a bitch. I didn’t mean that.”

“I am,” Katya says like she delights in it. “You are, too.”

There’s a lot more to say, but she doesn’t want to say any of it to this drunk creature. Instead, Trixie strokes Katya’s hair until the weight of her against her shoulder goes limp. It takes her a long time to fall asleep.

In the morning, Trixie opens her eyes to Katya two inches away from her face. It startles her and she lets out a tiny noise of alarm. The second she sees that Trixie is awake, Katya reaches out to touch her. The pad of her thumb comes to rest at Trixie’s bottom lip.

“I’m sorry, Trix. It’s just because you make me so happy, and you make me feel so safe. I thought I could handle it.”

“It’s okay. I’m not mad at you for drinking.” She can’t seem to stop saying untrue things. “I just. . .missed you. I kept turning to share the joke with you and you weren’t there.”

Katya looks at her like that has just broken her heart. She heaves a breath and bends her leg beneath the sheets until her knee nudges between Trixie’s thighs. Even though she’s irritated, and sad, Trixie kisses Katya because being sad with her here is so much better than her being gone. She would rather have Katya break her heart a hundred times than be without her.

“Trixie, милая, I love you too. I love you.”

She knows. She has known.

Still, it’s good to hear.

It takes her a couple of days to get over it. Katya seems hyperaware of every fluctuation in Trixie’s mood. She is extra sweet with her, drawing her a bath that night and cleaning the whole apartment while Trixie soaks. Every morning, she tells Trixie that she loves her.

By Thanksgiving, they’re okay again. Great, even. Katya goes home to Boston and Facetimes Trixie every spare second that she has, introduces her to her family over the phone too. Trixie misses her fiercely, has to skirt delicately around the hole that has opened up in her chest so she can function. She gets a lot of writing done, four new songs.

When Katya’s here, she can’t get a lot done because the sight of her with the guitar and the sound of her voice makes Katya need to fuck her immediately, every time. She’s glad to make progress, but she would much rather have Katya here taking the guitar out of her hands and placing it carefully out of the way before she pins Trixie down with her arms above her head.

She picks Katya up at the airport, and makes her promise never to go anywhere without her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> зайка - baby bunny  
> счастье моё - my happiness  
> милая - my love
> 
> Come say hello on Twitter @reallybeanie, or on Tumblr @katiehoughton


	2. зима

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: alcohol for this chapter. nothing too crazy, but be safe my loves

It takes Katya a month to be able to see Trixie perform. Every Tuesday and Thursday - she is working on booking a weekend, but this is a good start - Katya’s heart gets broken. Trixie leaves the apartment with her guitar case slung over her back and glitter on her cheekbones. While she puts on her makeup, Katya fills up the Chilly’s bottle with the peaches all over it that she got for Trixie. Warm water with lemon and honey, good for her throat. She kisses her goodbye at the front door, and then she has to wait three hours for Trixie to come back.

Their apartment has never been cleaner.

Every time, Trixie comes in the door this bubbling and enthusiastic creature. She grins so wide and reaches for Katya immediately, kisses her so that Katya can taste adrenaline and pride all over her. She’s popular, already making a name for herself around campus. People have started coming to the bar specifically to see her. Katya wants so badly to be there, but her Halloween slip up still makes shame pour through her like cold water whenever she thinks of it.

“It’s okay, babe,” Trixie tells her again.

She has the bathroom door open while she gets ready for bed, so that she can talk to Katya. She’s already beneath the sheets in underwear and a giant t-shirt, and she hugs a pillow to her chest while she watches Trixie taking off her makeup.

“It’s not okay. I want to be there to support you.”

“Katya,” Trixie sighs.

She comes out of the bathroom in her pink flannel pajama pants and white tee, her skin smooth and flushed and moisturised. Trixie pads around the apartment for a moment, checking the door is locked and turning off the lights on the Christmas tree they put up last week. Once she’s done, she gets into bed and draws Katya in close with an arm around her shoulders.

“You do support me. Every single day. And- listen. Your safety is the most important thing.”

In between her sentences, she leaves tiny kisses at Katya’s temple and her cheekbone. She smells very faintly of cigarette smoke and beer, but mostly she just smells like her. Katya lifts her chin to capture Trixie’s mouth in a real kiss.

“You know I’m so proud of you,” she says when they break apart.

Whenever she hears Trixie sing, it makes her breathless and useless, has her coming apart at the seams. It is so intimate and erotic, to potter around in the kitchen while Trixie works on a new song. This is a part of herself she loves to share, but Katya is the one here before all of the rough edges get smoothed out. It’s Katya that Trixie asks for advice, worrying over and over at it until she gets just the right phrasing.

“They really liked it, tonight.” Trixie presses her lips together and her mouth twists, like she has a secret she can’t believe she gets to keep. The dimple in her left cheek sinks a little deeper. She is so thrilled to be performing again, and Katya is so pleased for her.

“Of course they did, baby.”

It’s late, but it’s Friday night and they don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow. Katya slides a hand up underneath Trixie’s shirt and rolls her nipple between two fingers. Trixie is so responsive whenever Katya touches her. Already her hips are shifting. She palms Katya through her underwear and moans softly when she feels how hard Katya is for her.

Katya moves down the bed, pulling Trixie’s pajama pants off as she goes. She eats her out lazily, one hand flat against Trixie’s stomach to keep her still and the other curling two fingers inside of her. Trixie comes quickly, because Katya is selfless and so invested in Trixie’s orgasm every single time that she has it down to an art form now.

Both hands fist in Katya’s hair and she tugs on it to get Katya to crawl up her body and kiss her. It burns a bit, but Katya is so fucking hard that it just makes her jerk her hips down into the cradle of Trixie’s thighs. Trixie helps her to get her underwear off and then Katya is pushing into the heat of her.

She loves the feeling of Trixie’s bare skin against hers, the way their sweat makes their stomachs slide against each other. Katya kisses her, open-mouthed and obscene. Trixie has her hand down between their bodies to rub at her clit and the way her knuckles bump against Katya makes her wild. When Trixie comes she arches off the bed.

“I’m in love with you, Katya,” she whispers.

“I know, baby.” Katya says, and then she comes and Trixie strokes her hands over Katya’s shoulders as she does. When she gets her breath back she rolls off of Trixie and sprawls out next to her, clinging tight to her hand. “I love you, too.”

Trixie is already asleep, but that’s okay. She’ll tell her again in the morning.

It’s only a couple more weeks before Trixie books her first Saturday gig. She spirals a bit, agonising over her setlist, and Katya has to talk her down. Frustration is so adorable on her. Katya kisses the furrow between her brows, her long fingers, the creases at the backs of her knees. They settle on mostly Christmas songs, since it’s only ten days away now and everyone is feeling pretty festive. It’s a big deal, Trixie is so nervous all day that she can’t sit still, and Katya makes a decision.

She lets Trixie leave like normal, and the second she’s out the door she hurries through getting ready. Fame and Brooke both come with her, since Fame is also sober and Brooke chooses to be for tonight too, in solidarity. In the Uber on the way to the bar she’s anxious about whether she’s going to be able to handle it, being around a bunch of drunk people, but it turns out that there’s no reason to be.

The second she sees Trixie come out onto the little stage, she can’t focus on anything else. All of the lights are making her hair look extra shiny, and Katya sees now why she takes the time to put glitter on her eyelids and her cheekbones before every show. Every time she moves her head it catches the light and makes her ethereal, a goddess.

It’s so much fun, to sit here and watch her perform. Trixie bops around on the stage with her guitar and her enthusiasm is infectious. The crowd sing along and clap and cheer for her, and Katya is so pleased and so proud. That’s her Trixie up there, her most favourite person on earth. All of these people love her, but later tonight it is Katya who will get to fall asleep next to her.

Halfway through her setlist, Trixie disappears for a quick break. About four seconds after she’s gone from the stage, Katya’s phone pings with a text message.

 _show’s going great! miss you!_ it says, with a whole string of emojis. Trixie likes all of the pink hearts, she likes the sparkles and the peach and the two girls holding hands. Katya almost, almost gets up from her chair and goes backstage, but this is better.

It feels sort of sexy, to be here without Trixie knowing it. To be watching her perform for all of these people, and feel with such intimacy the red string of fate that connects their two hearts. Katya holds her phone against her chest, not trusting herself to reply.

“She’s really good, sweetheart,” Brooke says. She and Vanjie have been to a couple of Trixie’s shows before, and Katya is so grateful for them and their support. “Doing okay?”

“I sure am,” Katya grins. “She’s radiant.”

Fame comes back from the bar with virgin cocktails for all three of them. She angles the elegant lines of her body neatly into her chair and crosses her legs at the ankles. Of everyone they know, Fame is the least likely to sugar coat her opinion, and Katya holds her breath.

“I think I’m a little bit in love with your girlfriend, Katya. I think everyone in this bar is.”

Katya throws her head back on a scream and then immediately clamps a hand over her mouth. She can tune in to Trixie’s laughter or the sound of her voice anywhere, at any time, as if the two of them exist together on a different frequency from everyone else. She knows that the same is true for Trixie, and she doesn’t want to risk that she might hear her from backstage.

“It makes me miss home, her music,” Fame says.

Most of Trixie’s music is pretty country. She has these white cowboy boots with tiny, delicate floral embroidery on them that she wears almost every time she performs. There’s a picture of Dolly Parton from the 70s stuck to their fridge, and whenever Trixie leaves to come to the bar she kisses her fingers and presses them to the photograph. It makes Katya laugh, and makes her heart roll over in tenderness for Trixie.

Even tonight, she puts an acoustic twist on the Christmas standards she’s performing that makes them feel fresh and different. She comes back out and Katya fumbles for Brooke’s hand beside her. It must hurt, how hard Katya’s squeezing, but she can’t help it. Her heart is pounding frantically against the wall of her chest.

She wants to touch Trixie so bad right now. It feels like she’s on the outside of her body, looking down at herself. She can’t understand why she’s all the way over there.

Trixie finishes her set to raucous applause and accepts tips from the crowd of people at the stage. Her cheeks are flushed and strands of her hair are clinging to the sweat of her neck. She’s buoyant with the energy of the crowd and she clasps her hands, holds them over her heart.

When she eventually leaves the stage, Brooke disentangles her hand from Katya’s and shoves on her shoulder. “What are you waiting for? Go. _Go_.”

Katya feels gangly and awkward and useless as she makes her way through the throngs of people to the door. Her palms are sweaty and she tries to wipe them off on the skirt of her dress. In less than a minute, she’s going to see Trixie. She’s going to have to try to explain to Trixie everything that she’s feeling right now. It is suddenly the most important thing in the world, to make her understand.

She slips through the door and down the hallway to the tiny dressing room. Inside, Trixie already has her jacket on and is hurriedly gathering her things. She’s bent over her guitar case, zipping it closed, so she doesn’t notice Katya leaning her hip against the doorframe.

“Got somewhere better to be, mama?”

“ _Katya_ ,” Trixie gasps, and snaps upright. “What are you doing here? Oh my God!”

There’s a mirror behind Trixie and Katya can see herself in it. She looks good tonight, she wanted to look extra pretty to walk arm in arm with Trixie. Her hair is growing out a bit, past her shoulders now, and she’s managed not to smudge her lipstick.

“You gonna kiss me, superstar?” She cocks an eyebrow.

Immediately, like a knee jerk reaction, Trixie closes the space between them. Her hands settle in the curves of Katya’s waist and her breasts crush against Katya’s and she’s kissing her, kissing her. Getting Katya’s lipstick and her own all over them both, but who cares.

When they break apart there’s a little string of saliva connecting their mouths and Katya swipes it with the pad of her thumb. Trixie is grinning at her, wider and more brilliant than she was on stage even.

“I can’t believe you’re here. How did you- _what_?”

“Brooke and Fame came with me. Not that I needed them. Someone could have put a fucking keg down in front of me and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

It makes Trixie blush. Katya’s not done, not yet, but she needs a little bit of time to figure out the right words. Trixie is so patient with her, always gives her the time and space to get there.

“You liked it?” Trixie is suddenly shy, peering up at Katya through her lashes and chewing on her bottom lip.

“I couldn’t take my eyes off you, счастье моё. Trixie, my baby, you were so radiant. Sweet baby. They loved you.”

Katya finds herself petting at Trixie’s hair and her round cheeks and her soft biceps. She doesn’t realise that she’s crying until Trixie dabs gently at her tears with a handkerchief. She’s the only person Katya has ever known who still uses one, and it endears Trixie to her hopelessly, because everything does.

“I’m so happy you came. I’m proud of you.”

That makes her choke on a bubble of wet laughter. She blinks a couple of times to stop the silly burn of emotion. Trixie removes her hand from Katya’s hip and turns away to finish packing up her stuff, and to give her a tiny bit of privacy to pull herself together.

“ _I’m_ proud of _you_.” Katya sits on the counter where she imagines hundreds of people have put on their makeup, her feet on the chair. “You really moved me, зайка. You were born for this.”

“It’s just a gig in a college bar,” Trixie laughs, but she’s pleased. Katya can see it in the pretty flush of her ears and the way she self-consciously touches her hair.

She finishes packing up her stuff and Katya carries her backpack for her, clinging tight to Trixie’s free hand. She has a text from Brooke to say that she and Fame have left, and that she’ll see her after Christmas break.

On Monday, Katya is going home to Boston, and she’s taking Trixie with her. Trixie’s relationship with her family isn’t great. She has two much younger sisters who she adores, a stepdad who made her childhood a nightmare, and a mom she resents for not defending her more. Katya has always known that she’s been lucky, but seeing firsthand how much Trixie’s heart hurts over her family makes her so grateful for her own.

“I don’t know what to do with myself,” Trixie laughs. “Usually I hurry home to you, but now here you are.”

“We can still hurry home. I’d really like to fuck you right now. Before I have to start beating off screaming hoards.”

“You better not be beating off anyone except me.”

It makes Katya scream with laughter and stop in the middle of the hallway to grab at Trixie’s forearm. Trixie is laughing too, pleased with herself for that one.

When they come back out into the bar, a couple of people are actually waiting to talk to Trixie. She has a light inside of her that drew Katya to her the very first second she saw her, but it seems brighter than ever right now. Trixie is so kind and gentle with everyone, graciously accepting their compliments and making sure to get everybody’s name. She takes a couple of selfies, and then she reaches back behind herself for Katya’s hand and draws her in to her side.

“This is Katya. This is my girlfriend.”

They’re all pleasant enough, but Katya can tell they’re not interested in her. And that’s fine, because Trixie is. Trixie is. They excuse themselves eventually and their Uber is outside and Katya gets to ravage Trixie in the back of it, mouth open over the frantic jump of her pulse in her throat.

After that first time, Katya rarely misses a show. There’s the odd evening when she has other plans, but most nights she sits in the back of the bar and watches Trixie growing more and more comfortable and confident. Over Christmas break Katya’s entire family fell in love with her, and now every night all of the patrons in the bar do as well. Katya keeps bracing herself for the jealousy to come, but it never does.

Trixie wrote a song for her.

She doesn’t sing it every time she performs, but whenever she does she looks right to the back of the bar. The lights are too bright, and Katya knows that Trixie can’t actually see her, but she still looks every time. And every single fucking time, it makes Katya cry. It will never get old, she will never be tired of hearing Trixie sing and play the guitar and tell her she loves her in front of all these people.

January is kind to them. They have a routine that Katya loves, where before it would never even have occurred to her to _want_ that stability. Every morning she wakes up - always before Trixie - and she lets herself lie there for a handful of minutes and watch her. Trixie is so beautiful when she’s sleeping, a living doll with her lips slightly pursed and her long, pale lashes dusting her cheeks.

Katya likes her early mornings to herself only because she gets to do yoga in their kitchen and the whole time, the anticipation of getting to talk to Trixie when she wakes up bubbles in her chest. It’s not exactly cold in San Francisco, but the darker evenings make Katya feel snuggly. She wants to be touching Trixie at all times, her soft skin and the smell of her. And Trixie will tuck a blanket over them both on the couch and let Katya squish her cold feet underneath Trixie’s warm thighs.

When the power goes out one Thursday evening, Katya yells in surprise and alarm. Into the empty apartment, because Trixie ducked out to the grocery store to get something she needed to cook tonight. She paces until Trixie gets home. The sudden dark makes her claustrophobic. They have a salt lamp in the living space that Katya insists they leave on at night time, because she hates waking in the night to the velvet darkness of three am.

It’s so stupid. She is home and safe. The fact that everything outside of the window is black, that the neighbouring buildings are just patches of richer, more textured darkness, shouldn’t be freaking her out like this. Thunder cracks right overhead and their whole building shivers. Katya is so worried for Trixie out there in the storm that she chain smokes over the sink, even though she’ll get in trouble for not opening a window.

By the time Trixie comes in the door, Katya is breathless and halfway to sobbing. She’s juggling a brown paper grocery bag against her hip and her wallet, keys and phone in her other hand. The second she sees Katya’s pale, round face in the darkness, Trixie dumps everything on the counter and brings Katya into bed with her.

Trixie lies with most of her weight over top of Katya and she hides her face against Trixie’s neck and breathes as slowly and carefully as she can. Trixie’s gentle fingers sift through her hair and she murmurs to her, soft songs made of nonsense words mostly.

“Okay, sweetheart?” Trixie eventually says.

It still feels like they alone are alive and terrified. Katya has both hands fisted in the fabric of Trixie’s oversized white sweater. She relaxes her fingers one by one and slides her palms underneath instead to rest flat against Trixie’s stomach.

The pet name feels like fluttering low down in her belly. Trixie doesn’t use them very often, not like Katya who finds herself tacking one on to almost every sentence. She is very used to her emotions manifesting themselves physically - a byproduct of her anxiety - but it’s nice to remember that the good ones do too. Trixie kissing her sweaty forehead and whispering sweetnesses to her feels like stepping into a warm bath but in reverse, starting at her scalp and travelling down to her toes.

“Better now. The groceries are spoiling.”

That makes Trixie laugh. She gets out of bed and Katya does too, because she hates to be lounging if Trixie is up and doing something. Instead she sits on the kitchen countertop and drums her heels against the cabinet below while Trixie surveys the refrigerator.

“Everything’s spoiling.”

She stands with her hands on her hips and sighs and her breasts lift and fall beneath the thick knit of her sweater. After a moment’s contemplation she starts pulling things off the shelves and dumping them onto the counter.

They light every candle in the apartment and gorge themselves on everything that will go to waste otherwise. Katya carves slices of cheese straight from the block and arranges them onto crackers for Trixie. Anxiety still hums like a livewire through her, so loud she can hear it. The two of them sit on the floor with their backs against the couch and all the food they have spread out on the coffee table in front of them.

Both of their phones die and it makes Trixie grumbly, she keeps pressing the button as if she thinks it might spontaneously come back on, but Katya doesn’t care at all. She has the only person she ever really wants to talk to right here anyway, their arms brushing whenever one of them reaches for something else to eat.

The power comes back on at two in the morning. Suddenly the city is so loud and it presses itself angrily against the windows. Trixie emerges disoriented and adorable into the middle of the night. She blinks at Katya and she can’t help herself, has to kiss her softly with two fingers at her jaw to keep her close.

“What do we do?”

“You don’t need to do anything, счастье моё.”

Katya can feel the foolish tenderness all over her face, can hear it in her voice. She nudges on Trixie’s shoulder to get her to lie back down and she tucks the sheets up over her, leaves her in bed with a kiss at the corner of her mouth.

Pottering around the apartment turning off lights and restocking the refrigerator with everything that can be salvaged helps Katya to feel like she has a tiny bit of control, and that helps to stop the feeling that her lungs are collapsing. The sudden crescendo of every single noise all at once is making her itchy, and she considers for a second asking Trixie to wake up and sing something for her right now. And then she looks over at their bed, at her girlfriend’s face slack with sleep and her long hair fanned out all across Katya’s pillow, and she can’t do it.

Now that she’s awake, she is _awake_. Wired and maybe a little bit manic from the drama of the whole thing. She sweeps the floor and folds their laundry and wipes down the countertops. By the time she’s done it’s past three and she climbs back into bed next to Trixie and falls asleep slowly.

Something Katya learned very quickly is that Trixie has an extremely specific aesthetic vision. Everything always adheres to a theme, her clothes and hair and makeup and their home decor. Katya bought Trixie a polaroid camera for Christmas and she starts a whole wall of photographs, rearranges them constantly to make sure the colour story is consistent. She also really loves any excuse to decorate.

For Valentine’s Day, they spend an entire afternoon making heart garlands from paper and tacking them up to drape _just so_. They’re hosting a Valentine’s dinner for their friends. It’s the first real, adult gathering they’re having at their place and it’s making them both nervous. Katya chews relentlessly on her bottom lip and Trixie keeps moving things and then putting them back in their original spot two minutes later.

Everything is pink and red and heart shaped. Trixie has drawn little hearts like freckles across her cheeks. She looks so cute that Katya can’t keep her hands off her, has given up trying. Katya slides her hands up underneath the skirt of Trixie’s pink dress to grip her thighs. It sends a little shiver running through her and Katya kisses her neck because she doesn’t want to ruin Trixie’s lipstick.

“You look so beautiful, зайка.”

“I know.”

“Good,” Katya laughs. Her hands move up just a little higher to squeeze the meat of Trixie’s ass.

They don’t have much time before everyone gets here. Not enough for all the things Katya wants to do, anyway. This morning she got up extra early and took the stash of pink post its from her backpack and arranged them in a gigantic heart shape on their bathroom mirror. On each one, she wrote something she loves about Trixie. It had nearly killed Katya, waiting for her to wake up and see.

Trixie blew her in the middle of the kitchen, on her knees on the tile. And Katya returned the favour in the shower, but still. She wants her all the time.

Katya is very careful. She knows how long it took Trixie to fix her hair and makeup for today, because she sat on the edge of the bathtub earlier and watched her do it. She slicks two fingers through the heat between Trixie’s thighs and feels how wet she already is. Kissing her seems to be absolutely out of the question; Trixie is not about to compromise the integrity of her lipstick.

Today she’s wearing a very delicate and beautiful lace bra and matching underwear. Katya pulls them down over Trixie’s hips and leaves them on the floor while she crowds Trixie against the counter. She slides two fingers into her and lets Trixie grind against her palm. Trixie has one hand braced against the countertop behind her. With the other, she pushes Katya’s dress up and wraps her fingers around Katya’s dick. They get each other off just like that, both of them breathing hard. The eye contact is more intimate than having her tongue in Trixie’s mouth. She gets to watch the way Trixie’s pupils get more and more blown out when Katya curls her fingers just so. The way she closes her eyes when she comes but opens them again immediately afterwards to watch Katya’s face when she comes too, moments later.

Brooke can definitely tell what they just did when she arrives. Vanjie is wandering through the apartment touching everything and then she corners Trixie into drawing hearts on her face, too, but Brooke traps Katya in the kitchen and folds her arms.

“Having a good Valentine’s?”

“Only good one I’ve ever had,” Katya says. She means it to be flippant, but it comes out with much more sincerity than either of them expected.

Brooke smiles at her and wraps her up in a fast hug, kisses her cheek. They became friends their very first week of college and Katya is so grateful to have her. So proud of both of them and how they’ve grown.

“Brooke Lynn!” Vanjie yells from the bathroom. “Come here. Come let Miss Thing put hearts on you.”

Katya laughs at the way Brooke sighs and rolls her eyes but goes anyway with a pleased little smile. She is so whipped, but so is Katya.

Everyone else arrives over the next half hour and Katya loves the domesticity of answering the door each time and welcoming their friends into their home. Her lease was up last month and she didn’t renew it, at Trixie’s insistence. It would be stupid, she said, and she was right. So now she lives here, with Trixie.

“Oh thank God,” Fame says when she comes through the door. “You made it classy.”

“Trixie did,” Katya grins.

She is peripherally aware of Trixie in the kitchen making drinks for everyone and keeping an eye on the food. It’s nice, to feel Trixie’s eyes on her every so often and to get to watch Trixie, too. The apartment feels very full very quickly, but it’s lovely. Trixie’s friends are here, Kim and Violet and Pearl, and they’re mingling with Katya’s friends and really they are all both of their friends, now.

A couple of hours in, everyone has stuffed themselves with heart-shaped pizza and chocolate covered strawberries and arranged themselves in the living space to bicker over which cheesy romantic comedy to watch first. Trixie is in the kitchen making a start on cleaning up, and once Katya is satisfied that everyone who wants a pillow or a blanket has one, she goes to join her.

Trixie is at the sink, and Katya wraps her arms around her waist from behind. She’s shorter than Trixie is, so she has to stand on tiptoe, but it aligns the whole length of her body with Trixie’s. Katya kisses her cheek, and Trixie covers Katya’s hands at her stomach with both of her own.

“I love you, baby,” Katya murmurs.

“Love you, too. This is so fun. Can we do this every year?”

The thought of _every year_ , of ten or twenty years in the future, makes Katya’s knees buckle the tiniest bit. Trixie must feel it, the way Katya’s entire body cants into the backs of her thighs, but she is gracious enough not to say anything.

Katya backs up just enough to give Trixie room to turn around in the circle of her arms and face her. Her cheeks are pink from laughing with their friends. Trixie knots their fingers together and lifts them to her mouth so she can kiss each of Katya’s knuckles individually.

“Yes, счастье моё. We can do whatever you want.”

“Trixie!” Vanjie yells over the back of the couch. It makes them both jump and break apart like teenagers. “Are you gon’ serenade us, girl?”

Twin spots of pink happiness appear in Trixie’s cheeks. “Yeah, sure. Gimme a sec.”

“Work!” Vanjie yells, and twists back around on the couch to lean her cheek against Brooke’s shoulder again. They double date a lot, the four of them, and also hang out in various combinations of twos and threes. It feels terribly grown up, to have couple friends. Whenever things are rocky with Trixie, which is almost never, Katya has two dear friends who know their relationship so well that she can sound it out with.

“We’re so lucky,” Trixie says. Her voice is low and urgent and she’s clutching at Katya’s hands again. “Katya. We’re so lucky.”

“We are, зайка. I know.”

Trixie seems a little overwhelmed all of a sudden, so Katya lays her palm flat over Trixie’s heart and breathes slowly so that Trixie will match her. After a moment, Trixie kisses the very tip of Katya’s nose and then she goes to get her guitar from its case and start tuning it.

For just a second, Katya lingers in the kitchen watching everyone. This is their home, full of things that Trixie already had and things Katya brought with her and things they picked out together at the flea market on Saturday mornings. Full of people who love them. Someone - Violet, maybe - has found Trixie’s polaroid and everyone is passing it around, taking photograph after photograph.

Katya doesn’t need them. She will remember tonight, and the contentment that settles sweet and heavy like molasses in her stomach, for as long as she lives.


	3. весна

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for some lesbophobic and transphobic behaviour/language in this chapter. Nothing too intense, I hope, but stay safe my loves.

Spring has always been Trixie’s favourite time of year. She looks forward to it all winter long. In Wisconsin, when the first green shoots would start to poke up through the melting snow, Trixie would feel all of the tension begin to drain out of her shoulders and neck. It’s not quite the same in California, there’s no snow and she hasn’t even needed a jacket most days, but she still finds herself feeling alive with possibility and growth.

“What about this? For the table?” Katya is holding Trixie’s hand, their fingers laced together. With her other she skims the pads of her fingers over the leaves of the plant.

They make a habit of coming to the farmer’s market most weekends. It’s a part of their routine, a few hours they very intentionally carve out to spend together no matter how busy they both are. Katya got her certification to teach yoga, finally, which has meant a lot of early mornings for her. And with Trixie performing at the bar sometimes four or five nights a week now. . .yeah. They are both clinging to these precious mornings with both hands.

“Is it a pilea?”

“Sure is, baby,” Katya grins at her.

The last time she went home to Boston, she came back with a vintage book of botany that her grandfather gave her. She’s filled it with little sticky tabs to bookmark all of plants she wants to add to their home, things she wants to try and grow on the kitchen windowsill.

“It’s cute. Wanna get it?”

“I want to see what else they have first.” Katya wrinkles her nose.

She looks extra beautiful today. Her hair has gotten longer and she keeps tucking it back behind her ears all disgruntled and Trixie has to kiss her, can’t help herself. Katya smells like sunscreen today, and the sandalwood and violet of her perfume. Trixie is not usually the handsy one of the pair of them, but today she keeps finding herself seeking out Katya’s bare skin over and over again.

They wander around for a little while longer. Hand in hand, even though their palms are clammy and sticking together uncomfortably. Trixie buys them a peach and they eat it together, taking it in turns to take a bite. The juice drips all down Trixie’s chin and the inside of her wrist, and Katya opens her mouth over the hum of Trixie’s pulse and licks her skin clean. It makes her shiver and press her thighs together, makes her clutch at Katya’s bicep.

The sunshine has made Trixie’s freckles come out in full force across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, the tops of her shoulders. Katya likes to kiss each one individually in the morning when Trixie is fresh out of the shower and the ends of her hair are dripping onto the floor.

After they’ve looked at everything on offer and picked up some more fruit for the week and a loaf of bread, they go back for the plant. Katya carries it in her arms like an infant, holding the terracotta pot against her stomach while Trixie pays the guy and listens carefully to his instructions on how to keep it alive.

All of the walking around has made them both sweaty and kind of disgusting. When they get home Trixie puts the produce away and Katya rearranges her new baby about forty times before she’s happy that it’s going to get just the right amount of light.

“Come take a shower with me.” Trixie lays her hand at the small of Katya’s back and feels the sticky warmth of her skin.

Katya turns and laces her arms around Trixie’s neck, lifting her chin to kiss her. She’s started wearing a little less makeup the last few weeks, and Trixie is glad to be able to kiss her girlfriend without getting red lipstick all over both of them. She loves Katya both ways, all ways, but still. It’s easier.

Their shower is a tight squeeze with both of them. The water sprays in Katya’s eyes and she shrieks and shakes her head like a dog, her bangs spraying droplets all over Trixie as well. Letting Katya pin her against the tile with her thigh between both of Trixie’s doesn’t exactly help either of them to cool off.

Trixie rocks her hips lazily and gasps out a soft little noise of surprise when Katya slides two fingers into her. She wraps her fingers around Katya’s dick and squeezes until Katya groans and drops her forehead to Trixie’s shoulder.

The first few times they fucked, Trixie remembers being so worked up that she couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand still. She had wondered, then, if it would always be like that. It is and it isn’t. They know each other so intimately now. Katya knows how to drive her wild, that if she runs her fingernails over the outsides of Trixie’s thighs it makes her squirm. She also knows that if she curls her fingers just so and bites down on Trixie’s nipple, she can make her come in less than two minutes.

Katya encourages Trixie to turn around - the press of the cold tile to her entire front makes her yelp - and then she fucks her, one arm banded tight around Trixie’s waist to help hold her up. By the time they’re done all of the hot water has run out and Trixie is covered in gooseflesh.

She follows Katya out of the shower, yelping at the spray of cold across her shoulders before she turns the water off. They get dry and dressed again, in pajamas because they’re not going anywhere else today. While Katya gets started on lunch for them both, Trixie calls her mom.

It’s her baby sister’s birthday tomorrow, but she has classes all day and then a gig at the bar and she wants more than a throwaway second on the phone. She FaceTimes instead, because she really wants to see Eleanor’s face. She sent a gift in the mail and she’s hoping that their mom will let her sister open it early, so Trixie can see her reaction.

The call connects and Trixie props her phone up against their new plant in its pot and leans in close to grin at the screen. Her hair is air drying in curls that stick to her cheeks and neck and she can smell Katya’s shower gel all over herself. She feels good, lazy and content and still warm with the heat of the day.

“Trixie!” her sisters are both shrieking and clamouring to get into the frame. Her mom is just behind them in the background, sighing and shaking her head.

“Hi!” Trixie beams. “Look at you two. You’ve gotten so big. How old are you turning, Elly-belly? Six?”

“ _Nine_ ,” her sister says, outraged.

They chat for a little bit, Eleanor catching her up on school and dance class and ukulele lessons and Alice hopping around like a sparrow, trying to get a word in edgeways. Trixie has missed them so much. She hasn’t been home at all since she started college last fall. Since the summer before, actually. It hurts her heart, to be away from her sisters, but she can’t imagine herself ever going back to that house now.

She hasn’t even realised how much her heart has been hurting until just now. Both of her sisters are sitting on the same chair now, the wobbly one with the bum leg. Alice is half in Eleanor’s lap so that they both fit in the frame. They are sweet and hopeful and so full of joy. Every so often, something one of them says makes Katya huff a soft breath of laughter from behind her.

The sudden boom of her stepfather’s voice in the background sends a cascade of panic down the column of Trixie’s spine from two thousand miles away. She clenches her fists and presses them against her knees underneath the dining table. She is careful not to let her smile waver, careful to nod along to whatever Alice is saying even though she’s not actually hearing it. All of the blood in her body has drained out of her through her ears, and it roars.

“Is that Trixie? Is _it_ there?”

Behind her, Trixie senses the way Katya has frozen in place. She’s close enough to the camera that her face fills the entire screen and it shields Katya from her family’s view. Her mom is trying to shush her stepfather, but not once has that ever worked.

He comes the rest of the way into the kitchen. The stomp of his boots on the linoleum makes terror roll over her in waves, relentless and suffocating. She can’t see his face, just the edge of his hip, but it doesn’t make any difference.

“Turn that shit off! It’s not bad enough that she has to be a dyke? She has to shack up with a tranny, too?”

In the kitchen, Katya drops something into the sink. Whatever it was has definitely shattered. Trixie leans in a little closer to her phone, trying to protect Katya the only way she can right now. Her fingernails are cutting eight perfect half moons into the flesh of her palms and she’s certain she’s drawing blood.

“Happy birthday, Elly. I hope you like your gift.”

“Don’t go!” Alice wails, and bursts into tears.

It breaks Trixie’s fucking heart. But her heart beats on the outside of her body anyway, and it is in pieces in the kitchen sink right now.

“I love you, sweetheart. Both of you. Be good for Mama.” She blows them a kiss, and then she disconnects the call before the sight of her sister’s face all red and splotchy makes her cry, too.

The second the screen goes dark, Trixie gets up from her chair so fast that she stumbles and almost goes to her knees. She catches herself and makes it the rest of the way over to Katya. She’s trembling, staring down into the sink, and her face is totally slack. Trixie takes Katya’s hands in both of hers and turns her around.

“Are you hurt? Did you cut yourself?” She doesn’t get a response, so she checks Katya’s hands and arms for any marks. There’s nothing, thank God. Trixie lifts her eyes to Katya’s face again. “I am so, so sorry.”

Katya isn’t looking at her. She doesn’t seem to be looking at anything.

It was reckless and selfish of her, to FaceTime her family while Katya was here. There’s a reason she only speaks to her mom over the phone, once a month or so. There’s a reason no one in her family has ever spoken directly to Katya. She just wanted so badly to see her baby sisters.

There’s still hope for them. Trixie believes so fiercely that they can still turn out to be good people, even if they are raised in that house. She believes it so much that she aches with it.

“Katya, sweetheart. Hey. Are you okay?”

She touches two fingers to Katya’s chin to try and get her to lift her head. It works, but she still isn’t making eye contact. Trixie leads Katya by the clasp of their hands to sit in the chair Trixie has just vacated. She leaves her there while she fixes them each a mug of tea. Chamomile, for calm.

When she comes back over with their mugs, Katya finally looks at her. Her eyes are glassy and she’s bitten her bottom lip so hard that Trixie can see the imprint of her two front teeth in it.

“Trixie,” her voice comes out as this tiny, pitiful thing. Something wet and timid in her throat. “Your family hates you because of me. Those beautiful girls. . .”

Trixie chokes on a hysterical bubble of laughter. She reaches for Katya’s hands again across the table. She knows that she’s squeezing too tight, that Katya’s slender fingers are getting crushed, but she can’t help it. Desperation has made her clumsy and graceless.

“Baby, no. No. They’ve hated me - _he_ has hated me - since I came out when I was fifteen. Long before I even knew you existed.”

“He called me ‘it’.” A single tear escapes and rolls down Katya’s cheek, disappears into the crease at the corner of her mouth.

The pain of it wrenches Trixie right out of her seat. She comes around and settles herself in Katya’s lap, instead. The first couple of times Katya had pulled Trixie down to sit on her thighs she had worried about crushing her. She’s taller, and curvier, but Katya is stronger than she looks.

Trixie strokes her fingers against Katya’s cheeks to check for more tears, but they come away dry. She kisses her, the corner of her mouth and then the edge of her cheekbone. Both of Katya’s arms are around her waist and clinging tight.

“He’s a monster.” Trixie says it very softly, as if saying it any louder might make him materialise here in their kitchen, across the country.

They’re safe here. She’s safe.

Even if she does wake up sometimes in the middle of the night with two cold hands around her throat and terror a fearsome creature sitting on her chest. Now, she gets to roll over and bury her face in the spill of Katya’s hair.

“But your sisters.” Grief has made Katya’s face pale and pulled taut and she shakes her head slowly. “They’re babies. You should be a part of their life.”

“I wish I could be, more. But it’s not even a choice. Him, or you? Not even a question.”

“I don’t want you to have to choose.” Katya is still trembling a little bit, but she lays her cheek against Trixie’s chest, over her heart.

They are so lucky, so blessed to live where they do and to have the support network that they have, that it’s easy to forget. There are people out there in the world who wish they didn’t exist, who hate them with such spitting fervour because they dare to live their lives truthfully.

Trixie wants to bare her teeth, wants to put them to the throat of anybody who would make Katya feel like this. For herself, she has long given up. All of the fight had drained out of her by her senior year of high school. Whenever her stepfather would start on one of his tirades, which was basically whenever he laid eyes on her, Trixie would count her breaths and keep her face slack and escape to her room at the earliest possible opportunity. She is no longer interested in defending herself, but for Katya?

She wants to kill him with her bare hands, wants to feel the life drain out of him beneath her palms.

“I don’t have to choose because of you,” Trixie says. She sifts one hand through Katya’s hair over and over, to soothe her. “I have to choose because of him.”

Trixie gets off of Katya’s lap then so that they can both drink their tea. Sitting together at the dining table like this is so domestic and intimate. Trixie is so young still, but Katya makes her forget that. Katya makes her feel like they exist outside of time, like her soul has known Katya’s in every lifetime. Sometimes she pictures them in ten years, twenty, just like this.

Once they’re both done, Trixie deal with the mess in the sink. It was only a glass, and she’s grateful Katya didn’t hurt herself. While she picks the bigger chunks out of the basin and wraps them in tissue, Katya smokes out of the open window. She’s cut down a lot, and Trixie is so proud of her, but it’s warranted right now. Trixie could use a cigarette herself.

She finishes the lunch Katya was preparing and they eat side by side on the couch, their bare thighs touching. The silence is not typical for them, and Trixie debates whether to play some music, but all of the hairs on Katya’s arms are still standing on end. When she gets like this, when her anxiety flares bright and hot and livid, she is easily overstimulated. By now Trixie has learned to let her take the lead, that she will come clattering back into herself at some point and be ready to hear Trixie’s endless chattering again.

By the time the sun sets, Katya is doing much better. She’s smiling again, and she piles all of her hair up on top of her head and pads around the apartment in her bare feet, checking on all of her plant babies. Every time she moves past Trixie she kisses her, on the cheek or the mouth or the tip of her nose.

They do sheet masks together and paint each other’s nails and Katya lies face down and topless on their bed and lets Trixie massage her shoulders, her knees either side of Katya’s hips. While she kneads Katya’s muscles, Trixie sings softly to her. She’s working on a new song, a song about how soft her heart is these days. How she is so full up with tenderness that sometimes she can hardly stand it.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Trixie tells her, punctuating it each time with the touch of her lips to each of Katya’s vertebrae.

*   *   *

Finals stress both of them out so much that they hardly see each other. Trixie spends most of her time on campus with Kim, making diligent notes and practicing with past exam papers. She’s always been a good student, had known since she was twelve or thirteen that she needed to work her ass off and get the hell out of that tiny town. Those old habits are serving her well now, but she’s still so anxious that she feels as if she’s stretched taut and vibrating.

Katya prefers to study at home by herself, can’t focus with any sort of distraction. She gets up very early in the morning and spreads all of her papers and notes out all over the living room floor. Usually when Trixie wakes up in the morning Katya has already been at it for two or three hours, and when she comes home at night Katya is fast asleep in the middle of their bed and Trixie has to shove on her to get her to move over.

When it’s finally over, they spend a whole day with their phones turned off. They get ice cream and eat it walking through the botanical garden, they lie in the grass on their backs and watch the clouds lazily drifting. The whole day, Trixie keeps Katya’s hand tightly in hers. She doesn’t mean to cling. She just never realised how much it’s possible to miss someone even if you do share your bed with them every night.

“I don’t know what to do with myself,” Katya says.

It’s their first evening free from studying in weeks and weeks. She’s sitting on the kitchen countertop and Trixie moves to nudge her way in between Katya’s knees. Hands planted either side of Katya’s hips, Trixie kisses her slow and purposeful.

“Would you like to do me?” Trixie says when they break apart, and tilts her head in question.

It makes Katya scream out a laugh and jump down from the counter, pushing insistently on Trixie’s shoulders to get her to move towards their bed. She allows herself to be manhandled, mostly because Katya looks so thrilled. At the foot of the bed, Katya loops her arms around Trixie’s neck and pulls them both down onto the mattress.

“God, I’ve missed you. You’re so fucking sexy, baby.”

Katya is tugging insistently on Trixie’s floral blouse, trying to untuck it from her pink miniskirt. When she finally succeeds she lets out a noise of triumph and pulls it all the way off. It’s been a while. Trixie is on top of Katya and she slides her knee over Katya’s hips and sinks down, grinding against her dick. She’s so hard already and she gasps, her hands stilling at the clasp of Trixie’s bra.

Desperation always makes Trixie selfish. She has been aching for her for weeks, and if she doesn’t have Katya inside of her right now she might actually cry. Trixie doesn’t bother removing her skirt. She pushes Katya’s dress up over her hips and pulls her underwear down her thighs, hooks her own underwear to the side with two fingers as she sinks down over Katya.

They both groan and Trixie starts moving immediately, grinding filthily over Katya. She’s so fucking turned on that she can’t even make herself lift up, her knees won’t support her. She rocks her hips in tight little circles and the second Katya’s fingers find her clit it’s over, she’s coming hard and Katya is right behind her.

“Fuck,” Katya says when Trixie rolls off of her and flops onto her back. “That was like the first time. Don’t ever make me go that long without you again.”

“Don’t you think it’s kind of hot? All that longing.”

“I do.” Katya captures the finger Trixie is tracing back and forth in little circles across her chest and sucks it into her mouth for a second, lets her go again with an obscene popping noise. “But I missed you. My baby.”

Trixie gets up to use the bathroom and get ready for bed. She leaves the door open and in the mirror over the sink she can see Katya still sacked out in the middle of their bed. Eventually Katya comes to join her and they brush their teeth together, side by side and hips bumping. Their eyes meet in the mirror, and the quiet intimacy of it makes her love Katya so desperately that she feels like she’s dying. They rinse and spit and Trixie follows Katya to bed. She lays with her head on Katya’s chest and one arm draped over her stomach. They don’t fall asleep like that, but they lie there for a long time just breathing together.

The next week is Katya’s birthday, and Trixie isn’t sure that she’s ever been so excited for anything in her whole life. They’re hosting a party at their place for everyone they love. It’s themed like a wake, because Katya is a weirdo and Trixie loves her so much she would rip her own heart right out of her chest.

Sometimes it feels like she has.

Trixie got Katya a new pair of docs for her birthday and she’s stomping around the apartment in them while they put the finishing touches on everything. She’s wearing black fishnets with them and Trixie keeps running her hands up and down Katya’s thighs, transfixed.

“Hey, счастье моё. You look so pretty.” Katya tugs gently on one of Trixie’s curls.

The goth aesthetic that Katya wanted their party to have is really not something Trixie would ever usually lean towards, but she actually sort of likes it. She borrowed Katya’s red lipstick and she’s wearing a lacy black négligée. She feels not at all like herself, and whenever she catches sight of herself in the mirror a little thrill runs through her.

It feels like being undercover, like playacting. Katya can’t keep her hands off Trixie either, keeps touching her collarbones and the inside creases of her elbows as they work together to finish the decorations. When they’re done, Trixie climbs into Katya’s lap on the couch. They fucked this morning, twice, but Trixie still wants her very badly.

“You look so fucking hot,” Trixie says. “I want everyone to leave so I can have you all to myself.”

“No one’s here yet, baby.”

“I know.” She shrugs. “Still.”

The whole night, Katya holds court. She is effortless and effervescent, grinning so wide it must be making her face ache. Trixie watches from the kitchen as Katya shares anecdotes from her past birthdays that make everybody laugh. She’s sitting on the arm of the couch with her feet in Fame’s lap. Having everyone’s attention on her makes her face open up with lovely, clean light.

“Hey, mama.”

Vanjie’s voice makes Trixie jump and earns her a burst of Vanessa’s vibrant, staccato laughter. She and Brooke went through a rough patch a few months back and she crashed on Trixie and Katya’s couch for a couple of nights. It’s so good to see them tonight, holding hands and smiling and kissing when they think that no one is watching them.

All Trixie wants is for everyone to be happy, and Katya most of all.

“Hi. Your hair looks so good.” She’s dyed it again, honey blonde this time. Every single colour suits her, and Trixie is grumpy about it. She’s only ever been blonde, too afraid to try anything else. Vanjie keeps trying to persuade her to go pink, just temporarily, and she is really tempted.

“Thanks, girl. You know, I been watching her tonight. She lookin’ real good. Real healthy.”

Trixie follows Vanjie’s line of sight over to everybody else. They’re messing with the record player, squabbling over what to put on. Brooke is trying to be the voice of reason, standing in the middle of the group with her hands outstretched and palms flat. Everyone else is shouting over her. Katya is laughing so hard at something Kim said, that full body, fist shaking laugh that Trixie loves so much.

“She told me this morning that there were times she didn’t think she’d make it here. That every birthday is a surprise and a gift.”

Vanjie is fixing two drinks in red plastic cups but she’s listening, her body angled towards Trixie even if her eyes aren’t on her. In deference to Katya, everybody is sober tonight. Trixie looked up a few recipes for virgin cocktails that they could fix, but no one seems too bothered.

“I’m glad she found you, Trixie-doll. I ain’t sayin’ you saved her life or nothin’, but. . .”

“She did that herself,” Trixie says immediately. Automatically. Only afterwards realising how much she means it. She doesn’t ever want to take credit for all of the work that Katya has done to get here.

It isn’t Trixie who has cried on the bathroom floor at three in the morning, mouth open and keening against her own knees. Yes, Trixie was there to wrap a blanket around Katya’s shoulders and kiss her collarbone and sit with her until it passed, but Katya did this alone. She had to.

“Trixie, baby!” Katya calls out to her from across the room. “We can’t pick an album. Will you play something?”

She huffs out a little breath of laughter and goes to get her guitar. She figured this would happen and tuned it earlier, so she only has to tweak it a tiny bit. Trixie plays happy birthday, first. Everybody joins in and Katya sits with both hands clasped and held over her heart. The corners of her mouth are turned down, but her eyes are wet with joy.

Trixie plays a few more songs, takes a couple of requests from their friends. It’s fun to perform without any of the usual pressure. She loves having a steady gig at the bar and things are really, really great there, but it’s nice to be able to make mistakes.

When she puts the guitar away she earns herself a chorus of groans and noises of affront, but she’s tired of having her hands full. She wants to touch Katya. Trixie squeezes herself in between Katya and Brooke on the couch, has to drape her arm along the back of it so that her shoulders will fit. Katya drops her head back to rest in the crook of Trixie’s elbow and turns to smile at her.

“You good?” Trixie mouths at her.

“Perfect,” Katya mouths back.

By the time the party starts to wind down it is two in the morning and Katya is getting sleepy. She’s spent the last half hour or so with her head against Trixie’s shoulder, her eyes closing for longer and longer periods of time. Trixie conducts a conversation with Brooke over the top of Katya’s head. It’s nice, to not really be paying her any attention but still stroking tiny circles against Katya’s knee with the pad of her thumb.

“Are you guys staying here for the summer?” Brooke is soft-spoken at the best of times, and she has lowered her voice even more in deference to the late hour.

She’s the only one still here. Vanjie went home separately, which sent a flare of alarm through Trixie, but Brooke assured her that they’re fine. She thinks actually it wasn’t that Vanjie wanted to go home without Brooke, but that Brooke wanted to stay here.

They met their very first week at college, Brooke and Katya, and Trixie has seen how protective of her Brooke is. She’s grateful for it, that Katya has so many people who care about her. Loving her feels like this enormous thing sometimes, a task she isn’t quite worthy of, and it’s good to be able to share it with their friends.

“I am. Don’t think I’m gonna be going home again, if I can help it. Not sure what this one’s doing.”

“I can’t imagine she’ll be doing much of anything that involves being apart from you,” Brooke laughs.

Trixie eases Katya down very gently so that she’s lying lengthways on the couch with her legs curled up. She tucks the blanket around her and leaves her there. She and Brooke work mostly in silence, gathering all of the trash and piling the dishes neatly next to the sink to wash in the morning. She’s so tired that she feels a bit delirious, but she hates opening her eyes first thing to a mess.

Once everything is as tidy as it’s going to get, Trixie walks Brooke to the door. She’s not a hugger, which Brooke knows, so she squeezes her bicep instead.

“I’m so glad that you two found each other. You are so good for her, Trixie.”

Everybody keeps saying that. It makes Trixie wrinkle her nose. “I don’t know about that. I think she’s. . .learning to be good to herself. I just get to be here, while she does.”

“I’m really proud of both of you.” Brooke leaves her at the front door with a kiss to the cheek and a promise to text Trixie when she gets home safely.

In the living room, Trixie kneels next to the couch and sweeps her fingertips back and forth along Katya’s cheekbone until she stirs. She’s so cute like this, her face all scrunched up against the couch cushion. Her eyes open and she hums a little noise of discontentment.

“Hey, beautiful,” Trixie says. She kisses Katya’s clammy forehead and slides an arm underneath her to get her to sit up. “Come on. Let’s wash your face.”

Katya is not at all awake, so Trixie sits her down on the closed lid of the toilet seat. She washes her own face first, and then wipes Katya’s makeup away. She uses the fancy makeup remover that she usually saves for if she’s done a particularly heavy look. Katya sways a bit and Trixie moves to stand to one side of her and let Katya slump against her stomach.

“Did you have a good birthday, honey?”

She isn’t really expecting an answer, but Katya looks up at her with one eye still closed. Trixie laughs, can’t help it - Katya is so sleepy and so grumbly - but her hands are kind where they sift through Katya’s hair.

“My best birthday. Love you s’much.”

“I love you so much, too.”

Trixie is pretty sure that Katya is all the way asleep before she even manages to get her into their bed.


	4. летом

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is extensive discussion of anxiety and anxiety attacks in this chapter, please take care of yourselves loves!

Every summer, Katya goes a little bit nuts. It’s the lack of routine. She hates to wake up in the morning and have a whole empty day stretched out ahead of her, hates having to find ways to occupy herself that are not damaging. It makes her anxious, makes her spiral.

But not this year.

This year, she has a job. Two actually. She’s taken on more classes at the yoga studio, as many as they’ll let her have. And in the evenings a couple nights a week, she’s teaching _Russian for Beginners_ at the community centre. It’s a small class, only nine or ten students, but she loves that. She loves getting to connect with each of them and adapt the way she teaches to each of their needs.

Oh, and yeah. . .she has Trixie.

They have a whole life together. Katya can’t quite believe it some days. She keeps bracing to feel suffocated, or to get bored of Trixie, or maybe Trixie will get bored of _her_ , but none of that ever happens. She thinks the key to it is that she has an extremely fulfilling life outside of their relationship, and Trixie does too.

“Are you coming tonight?” Trixie calls from the bathroom.

She’s got the door open, an old habit from their old place. Katya can’t see into the bathroom from their bed anymore, but sometimes she will stand with her hip against the doorframe and watch Trixie get ready, like old times. She likes watching Trixie, especially when Trixie doesn’t know that she’s doing it.

Sometimes Trixie will stride into the kitchen so purposefully and then forget what she’s doing and Katya watches her brain tick over for a couple of seconds like she’s buffering. Or she will sing very softly to herself under her breath while she does mundane things like fold laundry or mop the floor. Trixie is so much a person and it helps Katya to remember that she is one too, when things get to be a lot.

“I don’t think so, baby.” She comes all the way into the bathroom, because she doesn’t want to be shouting across the apartment. “I was gonna see a movie with Fame.”

Trixie is so sweet. The sweetest. She turns around to smile at Katya and the half-finished bizarreness of her makeup makes Katya grin widely.

“Oh, fun! I’ll see you after?”

“Duh.” Katya rolls her eyes, but the effect is definitely lost when her face is all soft and tender like it is.

She doesn’t kiss Trixie, because she has red lipstick on and she has learned by now not to mess up Trixie’s pre-show makeup. At any other time she doesn’t care one bit, allows Katya to leave little crimson kiss prints all over her cheeks and neck, but not before a performance. She turns to leave her to it, but Trixie stops her with the circle of her fingers around Katya’s wrist.

“Wait. Wait, wait. Come here.” She lets herself be tugged right in to Trixie’s orbit and feels lightheaded and asteroid-fast. Trixie kisses her cheek at the spot where it starts to become her ear. “I really love you so much.”

“I love you too, милая.”

Katya leaves her to it then, has to. Sometimes she looks at Trixie and it makes her so sad and so filled up. It’s so difficult to be hurting with a witness, to have someone else around. She’s doing well, really well, but she’s still mentally ill. It doesn’t go away just because Trixie loves her, or vice versa.

One day a few weeks back, Katya had woken up and been entirely uninterested in being a person. The thought of anyone looking at her or speaking to her or acknowledging that she existed in any way had made her feel like a creature too big for its skin, pulsing and livid-hot. She’d been snippish, been unkind, but Trixie had waited graciously until Katya crawled into their bed at eleven o’clock at night and hid her face against Trixie’s shoulder.

Those sorts of days are a lot fewer and farther between now. And now nearly a year in, she’s not quite so ashamed. When she’s feeling incorporeal, Trixie will lay her hand spread wide against Katya’s sternum and press down hard. And she gets to be here for Trixie’s hard days, too.

The movie gets out right around the same time that Trixie’s gig is finishing, so Katya goes to meet her and walk her home. Now that classes are finished for the summer Trixie isn’t performing at the bar on campus so often anymore, but there are a couple of places near their new apartment that she has regular bookings at.

Katya waits outside so that she can smoke. At this time of year it never seems to get all the way dark. It makes her think about places so remote and so far north that the sun is a sine wave that never quite dips below the horizon. About how completely that would make her lose her mind.

She leans against the brick edifice of the building and the residual heat of the day warms her through her blouse. There are a couple of other people smoking nearby and it makes her miss Brooke suddenly. She’s gone home to Canada for the summer. Last year it was awful. Last year she went entire days not speaking to another soul. It won’t be like that this year - it already isn’t.

Brooke is a good friend, a gentle and considerate soul. She texts Katya every day, but it no longer feels quite so much like she’s looking for proof of life. Katya has been sober since Halloween, clean for even longer than that. It feels good, feels like she’s forming new habits. There’s still a moment at least once every single day where she has to consciously make that choice, but she is choosing it every single time.

While she waits for Trixie, Katya texts Brooke. The corner of her phone case has gotten all stretched out and thin because she has a nervous habit of peeling it back over and over again. It makes Trixie sigh and tut at her, and more than once she has offered to get Katya a new one, but it doesn’t bother her that it’s a little beat up.

_cant believe youve left me to smoke in an alley alone u rotted cunt_

The little bubble with the three dots pops up immediately. They’re three hours ahead in Toronto, so she was half expecting Brooke to be asleep right now, but apparently not.

 _miss you too, you wretched whore_ Brooke texts her back.

She busies herself on social media for a while. Sometimes she likes to search Trixie’s name and see if anyone has posted anything from her show. It’s quiet tonight, only a couple of pictures coming up. Katya likes both of them. One of them captivates her for a long while. It’s Trixie in profile, her eyes cast down to look at her guitar. She’s so beautiful, the lights making her hair glow pink-blonde. It makes her look ethereal, ephemeral. Like it’s the middle of the night and she’s asleep in bed next to Katya in the moonlight.

When she comes out, Katya stubs out her cigarette against the brick so that she can take Trixie’s guitar case to carry for her and lace the fingers of her free hand together with Trixie’s. She’s always so warm after a show, her cheeks flushed and her hair sticking to her neck.

“How was it, baby?”

“Okay.” Trixie shrugs. “Not my best ever. It was a tough crowd.”

“I’m sure you won them over.” Katya brings their joined hands to her mouth so that she can kiss Trixie’s knuckle.

The city is so alive around them. People are spilling out of the doorways of various clubs and bars, and most of the restaurants still have patrons filling up the tables on the sidewalks. There are so many noises all layered over top of one another. Katya itches her bicep, chews on her bottom lip. She feels hyperaware of the fact that she shares this universe with billions of other people. Right when that thought starts to make her claustrophobic, they close their front door on the world.

Trixie struggles out of her white cowboy boots and leaves them dumped in the middle of the kitchen floor for Katya to trip over at five am. She likes it, the little jolt to her system each morning that makes her think of Trixie right before she starts her yoga practice.

Tomorrow Trixie is working all day at the makeup counter, so Katya will hardly get to see her. It’s making her clingy tonight. Trixie is filling the kettle and setting it to boil on the stovetop, and Katya comes up behind her and drapes herself over Trixie’s back, arms around her shoulders.

“Do you like me, счастье моё?” Katya finds herself asking.

“No, you’re hateful.” It makes Katya scream a laugh, but Trixie turns in the circle of her arms to see her properly. “I like you very much.”

She is so soft, her voice and her hands drifting up and down Katya’s spine almost without touching. There is a gentleness to it, but also a caution, like she thinks that she needs to baby her. It’s not true tonight. She feels good. The movie was funny enough that it held her attention, and she likes spending time with Fame. She’s such a calm presence, so collected and rational, that it doesn’t give Katya a chance to start spiralling.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m good.” Katya leans in to knock her forehead against Trixie’s. It doesn’t feel completely true until she says it out loud. “Really. And I like you so much, too.”

Trixie laughs at that. Adrenaline is rolling off of her in waves and her hands are fidgety at the hem of Katya’s shirt. She gets like this after a performance. Sometimes she just needs a hot shower and some camomile tea, but other times Katya gets to fuck her until she’s boneless and quivering beneath her.

Katya nudges the skirt of Trixie’s tiny dress up her thighs experimentally. Gooseflesh trails in the wake of her fingertips everywhere she touches her. Katya hooks her finger in the waistband of Trixie’s underwear and pulls them away from her for a second, lets them snap back into place. It makes Trixie shiver and a tiny noise escapes her.

Katya might call it a whimper, if she were being unkind.

The kettle starts whistling furiously at them and Trixie reaches behind herself to switch off the burner. Katya half expects her to turn around and start fixing their tea. She doesn’t. Instead, she drops to her knees.

“God I wanna blow you right now. Is that cool?” Her voice is low and urgent, the way it always gets when Katya teases her until she’s dripping down her thighs.

Katya rests one casual hand on the top of Trixie’s head like she’s disinterested. Like her words and the pink swell of her lips don’t send a jolt right to her dick. “Sure, I guess. If you want to that bad.”

She’s wearing leather pants today and she has to wiggle a bit to help Trixie get her out of them. It is decidedly not sexy and Trixie is scream-laughing at her, but it doesn’t matter. Trixie thinks that she’s gorgeous and beautiful. Trixie wants her first thing in the morning when her bangs are sticking up all crazy and she’s not wearing any makeup. Just her.

“I was thinking about this the whole time I was on stage,” Trixie is saying. She’s got her cheek pillowed on Katya’s thigh and she can feel the peculiar work of her jaw as she speaks. “The whole time, Katya. You’re so fucking hot.”

Katya honks out a laugh at that, can’t help herself. It is just. . .so impossible. Trixie is an angel, a creature not of this world, who undoes Katya every day without trying. The reverse shouldn’t be true, doesn’t feasibly make any sense, but here they are. Trixie on her knees in their kitchen.

When Trixie’s mouth first touches her, hot and wet, her hips buck wildly. She mutters an apology, but Trixie swallows her down until her nose presses against Katya’s stomach. Katya watches her for a little bit, touches the pad of her thumb to the little crease of concentration forming between Trixie’s eyebrows. And then Trixie’s eyes open to meet Katya’s and they are so wide and dark that it feels like drowning and Katya has to look away.

She feels the familiar tightening low down in her stomach and she pushes on Trixie’s shoulder. “Baby, baby, please. You gotta- oh my _God_. You gotta stop.”

The noise Trixie makes when she pulls back is obscene. She blinks up at Katya, her lipstick all smudged and her eyes watering. She has one hand underneath her dress, Katya is just noticing.

“Can we- I want to go to bed.”

“ _Bitch!_ ” Trixie screeches. “I know this was my idea, but Jesus fucking Christ.”

“No, you dumb whore. I wanna fuck you in our bed.”

Katya knows that Trixie knows that. But she also knows that Trixie likes to hear it, that it makes her press her thighs together and bite her lip when Katya tells her just how badly she wants her. They fall all over each other, stumbling and drunk with lust, to the bedroom.

Usually, Trixie likes to be on top. She likes it a lot ( _there have been times, Trixie fucking slowly into Katya, the sight of her in the pink strap stalking predatory towards her making Katya lose her mind_ ) but tonight she stretches out in the middle of the mattress. She pulled her dress off over her head while they were walking and her tits heave against the white silk and lace of her bra.

Katya stands at the side of the bed and watches for a second. She has one hand wrapped around her dick and squeezing and with the other she works at the buttons of her shirt. Trixie watches Katya watching her, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Her thighs part and she slides a hand down between them, her fingers circling lazily.

“Please touch me. Please, Katya, please. I want you to touch me.”

When she gets like this, needy and entitled and desperate, she can’t stop shifting her hips against the mattress. Katya lets herself indulge in watching Trixie for a couple moments more. She rubs two fingers against her clit and her hips jerk up violently and Katya can’t wait any longer. She climbs onto the bed and crawls up Trixie’s body, supporting her weight with her elbows either side of Trixie’s head.

“Tell me about it. About how you were thinking of me, in front of all those people.”

“I’m always thinking- _oh_ ,” she chokes out a gasp as Katya slides into her in one slow thrust. “Always thinking about you. Can’t stop. I’m horny on main.”

The internet slang makes Katya scream out a laugh. Trixie’s grinning too, but then she arches her neck to kiss Katya and they’re done talking. After, Katya rolls off of Trixie and lies stretched out and spent on her back. She closes her eyes and listens to Trixie pottering around getting ready for bed. It’s so intimate, to exist with her in the same space.

Trixie comes back with tea for them both. She fluffs the pillows against the headboard and starts a show on the laptop, rests her cheek against Katya’s shoulder to watch it. Katya sifts her fingers through the lengths of Trixie’s hair. She’s not paying attention to what’s on the screen, not really.

They are so domestic. A younger - _stupider_ \- version of Katya would be horrified by it, sick to her stomach at the thought of having a routine and a relationship. But Trixie is warm and smells good and she keeps skimming her fingers absentmindedly back and forth along the length of Katya’s thigh as if to check that she’s still there. She is in love with her, can’t stand the thought of not waking up in the morning to Trixie’s plump cheeks and full lips and her freckles.

At two am, Katya is still awake. Trixie fell asleep hours ago and she’s curled up on her side next to Katya like something from a storybook, like a creature uncovered by the lifting of a flower petal. But Katya is awake.

The last week or so, her baseline anxiety level has been higher than usual. She’s functional, mostly. Jittery, and easily startled. Prone to zoning out for long stretches of time and then snapping back into herself with no idea how she’s managed to teach an entire class. She finds herself staring frantic and wide-eyed at Trixie from behind a pane of glass, beating her fists against it and screaming and screaming and screaming.

She gets up and moves for the kitchen. Now that they’re out of that tiny studio she can close the bedroom door very softly so she doesn’t disturb Trixie. Katya paces back and forth across the tile. Her heart is heavy and petulant in her chest like an albatross. She kneads two fingers against her breastbone to try and quiet the silly thing.

Sadness has never felt dark to her. It is bright and synthetic so that she can’t open her eyes all the way, can’t look it in the face. There’s no reason for it to be hitting her so hard in the middle of the night on a Wednesday. She lists all of the things she has in her life that fill her with gratitude, out loud and under her breath like a rosary. There are some beads somewhere, but she doesn’t have the presence of mind to find them right now.

An intense wave of claustrophobia rolls over her. Katya leans her forearms against the countertop and bows her head, shifting her weight from foot to foot and breathing very slowly through her mouth. It’s not working. She wants to be outside. She just- she has to be outside.

She pads out of their apartment and down the stairs in her sock feet. Outside it’s drizzling and not quite warm. Katya stands in the middle of the sidewalk and tips her head back, feels the rain collecting in the hollow of her throat. She’s sobbing now, suddenly and without warning. Her eyes are open to the rain and the sky and the stars.

It could have been a minute or an hour. Warm fingers wrap around her elbow, a warm blanket wraps around her shoulders.

“Sweetheart. Katenka, love. It’s okay.”

The nickname makes her shiver. It’s what her mother calls her, and Trixie has taken to using it when she’s afraid, when she doesn’t know how to help. The first time, Trixie had found her staring at herself in the bathroom mirror of a restaurant and when she had asked _what are you doing_ Katya had told her _i’m trying to figure out who that is_.

Trixie steps around in front of her. She cups both hands over Katya’s ears and the roaring white noise helps her to catch her breath. She feels absolutely alone in the universe. She curls her hands into fists and then flexes her fingers straight again over and over.

It’s quiet out here on the street in the early morning. Their neighbourhood is mostly residential, and it’s the middle of the week. No one stumbling home drunk from a club tonight. It feels like something is lodged in her throat - _globus pharyngeus_ , Trixie had determined, and researched for hours. Katya swallows hard again and again.

“I’m right here. I’ve got you.” Trixie is holding the blanket closed in one fist at Katya’s sternum. “Can you come inside, do you think?”

Katya nods, abandoned by her vocal chords right now. She lets Trixie take her by the hand and lead her inside like a toddler. Like a person not equipped to be in charge of themselves. She is long past the point of being humiliated by it.

At dinner with their friends a few weeks back everyone had been deliberating over the menu and Katya had turned to Trixie and said emphatically _i hate food_ and no one had even blinked. They are all patient and supportive, because they are all going through things of their own.

“Want me to hold you?” Trixie asks as they get back into bed.

Katya nods again. She’s still got the blanket around her shoulders, and she lets Trixie maneuver them both until she’s laying half on Trixie’s chest and held tight in both of her arms. It’s the middle of the fucking night, and she hates herself for waking Trixie up with this. Then again, the only times Trixie has ever been really angry with her have been when she’s gotten up in the morning to find Katya passed out on the kitchen floor or in the empty bathtub.

“Did something trigger you?”

“Don’t think so.” Her voice is very small, an unused thing low down in her throat. “I’m okay.”

She isn’t. Her heart is beating violently and without rhythm, and every so often her entire body jerks violently. The temperature change has made her erupt in gooseflesh. Her jaw aches from clenching her teeth so hard so that they don’t rattle.

But she will be. It doesn’t feel quite so endless and insurmountable anymore.

Trixie’s face is round and pale and kind as the moon, peering down at her in the half-dark. She kisses Katya’s cheeks and the tip of her nose. She is so gentle and soft. It really does help, to hide her face against the column of Trixie’s neck and breathe in the sleep-sweat of her.

“I’m sorry for my broken brain.” She says it like it’s a confession, her lips barely moving to form the words.

Trixie grunts a little noise of irritation against the top of Katya’s head. “Shut up, you fucking idiot. I’m in love with you.”

She says it like that explains it. And maybe it does.

* * *

“Stay _still_!”

Trixie’s exasperation makes her so adorable that Katya _can’t_ stay still; it makes her wiggle with contentment on the bathroom countertop and sends them into a positive feedback loop. Her girlfriend is between her knees, trying very hard to do Katya’s makeup. She’s done her own already, a rainbow eye with a red lip that is driving Katya to distraction because it is so completely unlike Trixie.

For Katya, she’s constructing something in pink and blue and white. Katya isn’t sure what, and doesn’t really care either. She trusts Trixie to make her look cute, and she’s definitely going to sweat most of it off within the hour anyway.

“What was it like for you? This day, last year,” she asks.

Trixie has the heel of her palm balanced at Katya’s cheek for a steady hand while she draws her eyeliner wing, and she tuts when Katya talking makes her hand shake. For a moment she thinks she might not get an answer, but Trixie sets the eyeliner pen down and rests her hands at Katya’s bare thighs.

“Scary. I was brand new to the city. Didn’t know anyone. Had never been to Pride before, or. . .not Pride like that. Didn’t know what to expect.”

“Did you expect me, Barbara?” Katya leers at her. It makes Trixie screech and shove on Katya’s shoulder.

“Absolutely fucking _not_. You came out of nowhere. Like I dreamed you. You freak.”

Katya closes her eyes to let Trixie put the finishing touches on her makeup. She’s so excited for today that she can hardly bear it. She’s been drumming her heels against the cabinet this whole time and Trixie, patient sweet Trixie, hasn’t once complained. When she’s done, Katya hops down from the countertop and turns around to inspect herself. She leans in close to the mirror and whistles.

“You made me look so _pretty_. Thanks, baby.”

“You are so pretty.” Trixie kisses the ball of Katya’s shoulder.

They look really cute together. All the time, but especially today. Trixie is dressed in a white tee and denim shorts, but she has her lesbian flag wrapped around her shoulders and she’s spent the last couple weeks constructing a flower crown in the colours of the flag as well. Her hair flows in soft waves down to her waist and her skin is golden and glowing. She looks like a nymph or a siren.

Katya is amazed by her. One whole year since they met. Well, actually a year and a day, but who’s counting? She slides her arms around Trixie’s waist from behind and tucks them into the front pockets of her shorts. It allows her to drag Trixie’s hip back until they nestle against hers. She nudges Trixie’s hair out of the way with her nose and opens her mouth against Trixie’s neck.

Today she’s wearing the docs Trixie got her for her birthday with fishnets and tiny shorts and an even tinier cropped tee. A few nights ago she and Trixie painted signs at the kitchen table. _Support your sisters, not just your cis-ters_ , Katya’s says. She’s extremely proud of it, can’t wait to jump up and down next to Trixie and wave it at people.

They’re joining everybody else down at the parade. Brooke and Vanjie, who did abandon Katya last year to go fuck, but that directly resulted in her meeting Trixie so she’s not mad about it. Violet and Pearl and Fame and Kim, and a few other people Katya doesn’t know very well but is excited to spend the day with. She feels tender towards the whole world and everyone in it.

Before they meet up with everyone else though, she has Trixie. Their fingers are interlocked as they walk, partly so they don’t get separated in the crowds and partly because they are a pair of useless lesbians who can’t stop holding hands for more than two seconds.

“Hey, baby. Wanna know a secret?”

“If this is about the first time you jacked off, I’m-”

Katya cuts her off with a scream. “No! It’s not. Oh my God. You villain.”

“Okay then.” Trixie wrinkles her nose. She’s not wearing sunglasses today, because she spent so much time on her eye makeup that she wants people to be able to actually see it. It’s making her eyes all scrunched up so that she looks sort of mad, but she’s smiling. “Sure.”

“I fell in love with you. That day.”

Trixie scoffs. “No you didn’t.”

“I absolutely did,” Katya insists. “Before I even spoke to you. Watching you trying to fix your hair without having to stop dancing. How much you were living for the parade. Your ass in those shorts. Mama, you had me by the throat the second I laid eyes on you.”

Twin spots of pleased colour have appeared high up in Trixie’s cheeks. She squeezes Katya’s hand in hers and lets her see the whole truth across her face. Trixie was a little slower to fall, a little less reckless with her heart. It doesn’t mean she loves Katya any less now.

“I think you fell in _lust_ with me.” She says it very gently, like she’s trying to let Katya down easy.

“Nope!” Katya says cheerily. She shrugs, gives Trixie a closed mouth smile. “Because you know Tracy, you let me fuck you on the first date. And if it had just been lust, that would have gotten you out of my system.”

“I don’t want to be out of your system.”

The way she blurts it out, and the way she blushes so hard immediately after, is so cute that Katya can hardly stand it. She kisses her very carefully, mindful of their lipstick. It’s hot out, and sweat is prickling at the skin between Katya’s shoulder blades. It makes her very aware of her body and she feels desire unfurling slowly in the pit of her stomach.

“Calm down, зайка. It’s been a year and I’m still completely obsessed with you. I think you’re good.”

Through the crowds of people lining the barricades at either side of the parade route, Katya spots Brooke a head taller than most everybody else around her. She hears Vanjie’s screaming laughter next and she grins, hooks her arm through Trixie’s. They worm their way apologetically through the crowd until they get to their friends.

Everybody greets everybody else with hugs and kisses to the cheek and laughter. The music is very loud and there are hundreds of conversations taking place all around them. Katya keeps waiting for her anxiety to set in, for the overstimulation to make her feel like she’s about to tear off her own skin.

She leans her forearms against the barrier. Trixie is right beside her. She’s talking to Pearl about something Katya can’t quite hear, but she’s got one hand firmly at the small of Katya’s back. Katya focuses on her breathing and tries to imagine a line travelling all the way down from her sternum to connect her to the centre of the earth. She wishes she were barefoot.

“Tell me if it gets too much and we can go,” Trixie says right into her ear.

Now that the parade is starting, she has maneuvered herself so that she’s standing almost behind Katya. She’s a good few inches taller so she can see over the top of Katya’s head, and she has one hand resting in the dip of Katya’s waist. She’s swaying to the music, and every time their bare thighs brush together a little thrill zips through Katya’s stomach.

“I’m good, счастье моё. I’m so happy.”

On Katya’s other side, Vanjie grins at her. “This where y’all got your jush, huh Zamo?”

“Only because you two abominable whores left me here all by myself.”

Vanjie looks over her shoulder and raises an eyebrow at Brooke. “They ain’t sounding all that grateful.”

“No, they’re not,” Brooke agrees, but she’s grinning at them.

Throughout the course of the parade people join and leave their little group, but Katya and Trixie stay right where they are. Katya can’t stop looking up at Trixie, her eyes shiny with unfiltered joy. When she first saw her that day a year ago, she had been so startled that she had actually lost her footing and had to catch herself against the railing.

A living doll, perfectly coiffed and perfectly proportioned. So young and alive and happy that Katya had been certain if she didn’t find a way to talk to her she would absolutely just have to lie down at her feet instead. Sometimes even now, she wakes up in the middle of the night or she stops in her tracks in the grocery store and she looks at Trixie and it’s like looking at an image on a television screen. Like something she’s not allowed to touch.

“Hey, Trix?” There’s a lull in the procession, so she doesn’t have to yell quite so loud. Trixie bends down to put her ear to Katya’s lips. “I’m so glad I met you. This has been the best year of my life.”

“You are such a fucking lesbian,” Trixie laughs, and wraps her flag around both of their shoulders as if to prove it.

It’s a bit too hot to be cuddled together like this and with the flag as well. Katya feels beads of sweat forming at her hairline and sliding down the side of her face, taking her makeup with them. She remembers how desperately she had tried to look like a sane person, tried to make herself attractive to Trixie. And now here they are. They will wake up tomorrow morning, bare-faced and blinking in the early morning light, and Trixie will love her just exactly as she is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Nadia, who has kept me sane throughout the process of writing this and is the greatest cheerleader anyone could hope to have. And thank you to all of you who have taken the time to read and leave feedback or kudos, I am so incredibly grateful to you! Come say hi on twitter (reallybeanie) or tumblr (katiehoughton)


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